PALMETTO POEM, Mungin: Jim Crow

Halifax County, N.C., 1938. Public domain photo via Wikipedia.

By Horace Mungin, special to Charleston Currents

Jim Crow where truth can’t go

Jim Crow where freedom can’t fly

Jim Crow where light can’t shine

Jim Crow where Justice is denied

Jim Crow was born in the South

Jim Crow was raised in the West

Jim Crow was schooled in the East

Jim Crow worked in the North

Jim Crow flourished in

The United States of America

Restricting black lives and progress

For a hundred years

Jim Crow in schools

Jim Crow in jails

Jim Crow in banks

Jim Crow in hospitals

Jim Crow in the work places

Jim Crow in public transportation

Jim Crow at the lunch counters

Jim Crow justice

Jim Crow water fountains

Jim Crow housings

Jim Crow text books

Jim Crow preachers

Jim Crow teachers

Jim Crow judges

Jim Crow police

Jim Crow Reconstruction

Jim Crow Birth of a Nation

Jim Crow white lynch mob

Jim Crow Poll taxes

Jim Crow separate but equal

Jim Crow miscegenation

Jim Crow Bible

Jim Crow Stifling

Jim Crow white knight of the Ku Klux Klan

Then came the Civil Rights Movement

Chipping away at Jim Crow

Chiseled it down to Jim Crow lite

Jim Crow weakened and a black

President was elected

Creating the inevitable white backlash

In 2016 down on its dying bed

Jim Crow heaved a disparate reprieve

To puke out the four-year campaign

Called Make America Great Again

Jim Crow, Jim Crow

Jim Crowed to the end. 

Mungin

Horace Mungin, born in Hollywood, S.C, is a writer and poet from the period known as the Black Arts (1965 -1975) Movement. Mungin, who now lives in Ridgeville, is founder of Black Forum Magazine, a once nationally popular, literary publication created during the Black Arts Movement and now featured in a permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Mungin is the author of 13 books. Our monthly Palmetto Poem section is curated by Marjory Wentworth, South Carolina’s poet laureate.